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Pasta
Andy has lived "all over" in the last five years. When prompted about apartments, he likes to talk about how he's been in Harlem ("before Red Rooster opened and it became hip"), Brooklyn ("ten minutes from DiFara") and even Queens ("Astoria off the N/Q," but whatever!). It helped that he doesn't own much beyond his wardrobe and bookshelves, and he always used his roommates' mismatched dishware anyway. He had packing down to a six-hour science by the time I met him. Books were crammed Tetris block-tight in reused cardboard boxes, CD tower mummified in plastic wrap, shoes and clothes in lumpy garbage bag sacks. There was that old box of farfalle that kept moving from apartment to apartment with him. The blue cardboard box was dusty and dull at the corners, usually nestled unnoticed at the bottom corner of the island cart in the kitchen. I didn't peek through its cloudy cellophane window out of fear of seeing something unpleasant. I later learned that this box of farfalle from "probably around 2011" was the first and last grocery item Andy bought with Grace when they were still together. He had just moved into a place on 119th "right off Malcolm X," and she was over soon after, sitting on his boxes of books, bare feet swinging just over the bare floor. He had assembled the bed frame just two days earlier, and he couldn't wait to fuck her for the first time in this new place. After deciding to stay in and cook for the night, they walked to Fine Fare for provisions. He grabbed milk, eggs, and eggplants, and she picked out a bunch of spinach and oddly shaped plum tomatoes. They wandered through the aisles and stopped in front of the pasta, where Andy thought it would be fun to "grab your favorite pasta shape at the count of three." She went for a box of farfalle, and he a box of fusilli ("for the Seinfeld reference"). They settled for her farfalle and took everything back to his apartment. Of course, as these things go, they didn't ever start dinner and spent the evening in Andy's new bed. They ended up eating takeout burritos in bed, and Andy later admitted that he was surprised and mildly disappointed with her taste in pasta ("and music") anyway. Of course, as these stories go, they broke up shortly afterward and never had a chance to cook the meal they had planned this night. Something about an ex-boyfriend who came back into the picture and a confusing confrontation over gchat, which Andy showed to us when we were over. The chat records didn't show the time Grace visited the apartment once more for a proper farewell fuck, but that was the last time they ever contacted one another and there was no looking back from the moment she walked out the door and turned the corner in the hallway. It was something like a screenwriter's artifice. Cue the montage illustrating the following year of Radiohead's "India Rubber" on loop and drunken cab rides across bridges and boroughs, end scene, fade to black and let the credits roll.
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